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It has been decades since Eddie Murphy has done stand-up comedy for the general public, but in a precursor to his upcoming Netflix specials, Murphy has agreed to perform a set from home for Byron Allen‘s upcoming charity event, the Feeding America Comedy Festival.

Adam Sandler, Chris Rock, Kevin Hart, Tiffany Haddish and Billy Crystal are also part of the star-studded lineup for the festival, which Allen put together via his Entertainment Studios. Funny or Die is co-producing the charity event, which will raise money for Feeding America.

Image via Paramount

The three-hour event won’t air on a major network or streaming service, however. Instead, it will be live-streamed on Allen Media Group’s television networks Comedy.TV and The Weather Channel as well as on the free streaming service app Local Now on Saturday, May 9. Viewers will be encouraged to donate to Feeding America at www.feedingamerica.org.

“In partnership with Feeding America, my comedian friends and all of us at Allen Media Group are pleased to announce this global live-streaming comedy event on May 9th,” Allen said in a statement. “Laughter is often the best medicine, and we are extremely motivated to bring attention to issues of food insecurity, and to assist in providing meals to families across the country who are financially impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Image via NBC

“The coronavirus pandemic and the economic downturn it has created is shining a light on the fragile nature of people’s household budgets,” added Claire Babineaux-Fontenot, CEO of Feeding America, a nationwide network of 200 food banks. “Millions more of our neighbors are turning to food banks for help and we cannot thank Byron Allen and Allen Media Group enough for their support to raise funds and awareness of our work.”

Murphy is riding high off strong notices for his Netflix movie Dolemite Is My Name, as well as his recent hosting stint on Saturday Night Live. His new comedy special was supposed to hit Netflix later this year, but it’s unclear if that’s still the case, as I’m not sure whether he had a chance to film it before comedy clubs across the country were forced to close their doors. While Murphy’s Feeding America set may be short and safe, it’s something to hold fans over until his full-fledged Netflix special arrives. At this point, we’ll take any laughs we can get!

Good marketing takes a lot of work as it is, but folks in the insurance market really have their work cut out for them when it comes to providing prospective and existing policyholders with personalized marketing efforts that match their needs.

Many insurance organizations, big and small, are dealing with disconnected marketing systems and have to spend a great portion of their time completing manual tasks before their efforts ever see the light of day. This makes it difficult to even start thinking about enhancing their strategy and growing their efforts at scale.

These benefits might sound too good to be true, but they describe some of the milestones your insurance industry peers have been able to achieve with marketing automation. We can go on and on about the wonders of marketing automation, but it’s much easier to show you the benefits of this technology through real-world examples.

Today we’re going to show you how three Act-On customers have leveraged this powerful technology to stand out from the crowd in and see results!

RSA Insurance Enhances Their Email to Stand Out in the Inbox

RSA Insurance is one of the oldest and most well-known insurance providers in the world and are dedicated to serving individuals, small businesses, and large corporations. Despite being well-known in the industry, this insurance powerhouse’s UK unit was struggling to break through the noise of the inbox to reach their target audience, which consisted of brokers and risk managers.

In addition, RSA had no way of determining which contacts had opened their emails and lacked very little visibility into their results. This made it very difficult for the organization to track their campaign ROI and enhance their efforts to improve audience engagement.

All of this changed when RSA began leveraging marketing automation. The insurance giant has upped their game and is using Act-On to design and A/B test their emails, create automated campaigns and landing pages, and measure their impact.

Physicians Insurance tested the waters with Constant Contact and Mailchimp, but neither of these solutions had the features and tools they needed to provide their audience with targeted communications. These solutions forced the team at Physicians Insurance to manually perform tasks such as segmentation, which was a process that required a lot of time and effort and was prone to error –– leaving the company far short of achieving their marketing goals.

Implementing marketing automation has enabled Physicians Insurance to dream big and innovate their marketing strategy. Physicians Insurance is leveraging Act-On to segment their audience by their job title, specialty, geographic region, and even the size of their organization. With these lists in place, the company is able to improve the engagement of their monthly newsletters because they’re now designed to match their audience with resources and content that fit their needs and interests.

It’s widely known that personalized marketing that resonates with your audience will yield better results. Although that was the goal for Meyer and Associates, providing their audience with the level of personalization they needed to make informed decisions turned out to be an overwhelming lift.

The broker and “third-party administrator” faced the unique challenge of marketing its insurance products to over 100 alumni associations, often having to coordinate with the colleges and universities on messaging and timing. If that wasn’t difficult enough, Meyer and Associates was finding that their emails were being blocked by ISPs and not reaching their audience’s inbox.

The company had previously used ESPs such as Constant Contact and Mailchimp, but they knew they needed a more robust and holistic solution to overcome their marketing challenges and provide their audience with a targeted and enjoyable customer journey.

Act-On not only equipped Meyer and Associates with powerful marketing tools, but our organization’s deliverability team also worked with them to fix their email reputation and improve their email marketing performance and results.

With marketing automation, Meyer and Associates has been able to develop a lead scoring model that enables them to understand their customers place in the buying journey to deliver a more enjoyable and relevant customer experience. Best of all, they can now easily segment their lists, send automated emails, and measure the performance of their marketing efforts for consistent optimization and improvement.

All these benefits combined have empowered Meyer and Associates to:

Gain access to insights that help them shape and enhance their marketing strategy

Achieve open rates that exceed industry averages

Easily send different versions of tailored emails to their various marketing segments

Act-On Is Designed to Empower Insurance Marketers to Get the Best Results

Insurance marketing isn’t easy, which is why our team is dedicated to providing your business with powerful technology to help you easily launch personalized multi-channel campaigns that empower you to achieve your marketing goals.

If you’re ready to talk business and want to see our platform in action, please schedule a demo with one of our marketing automation experts. They can show you how Act-On’s marketing automation solution can solve your current marketing challenges and even share a few tactics you can implement to get even better results.

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With data at the center of the digital revolution of the energy industry, oil and gas companies have a great need for candidates ready to tackle data challenges from day one. Students with well-honed data and analytics skills are already a step ahead when going through the recruiting process. Yet, many universities struggle to provide adequate coursework covering these skills. It’s a gap that the University of Houston (UH), a leading research and academic institution located in the energy capital of the country, wasn’t satisfied leaving alone.

In fact, UH has started a new initiative to better prepare students for a career in one of the most data-rich industries, energy.

By equipping students with key data concepts and hands-on experience in data analytics, UH is better preparing them for the workforce of today and giving them the experience needed to stand out when applying for jobs.

Confident data analysis

Previously, UH had relied on Excel to teach statistical concepts, but this tool didn’t allow students to dig deeper into the data or tell a story around the data based on trends and patterns they uncovered.

By partnering with TIBCO Spotfire®, UH enables students to explore, wrangle, and manipulate data with confidence and ease—to better understand and communicate what they’ve found to others.

What’s more, professors are teaching students how to apply data to discussions around supply and demand and other current events affecting the oil and gas industry. Students are employing Spotfire®to generate visualizations and models about their observations of the market, providing in-depth analyses and predictions.

Sparking passion

Even more exciting than simply arming students with a valuable new skill, these projects are inspiring students to apply data analytics to their personal interests. In one such passion project, UH MBA student Zeinab Zamani created a dashboard of energy development in countries outside the U.S. to help identify possible lucrative investments for energy companies.

The purpose of education isn’t just to prepare the next generation of workers. But also to spark new interests and passions in students—to make them excited for the work they’ll be doing and further push the envelope of innovation. UH’s partnership with TIBCO accomplishes both.

This evening in Philadelphia, Comcast NBCUniversal’s Lift Labs Accelerator showcased the 11 companies in its second-ever class during a demo day in front of investors and the local tech community. The event marked the finale of the program’s 13-week program, during which each startup worked with Techstars’ bench of industry experts and Comcast brands including Xfinity, NBC, Telemundo, NBC Sports, Universal Studios, DreamWorks Animation, Comcast Business, Comcast Ventures, and Sky.

While not every startup completed proof of concept or a pilot project with Comcast, eight of the 11 announced that they did. And one company, NICKL, said it would relocate its headquarters to Philadelphia.

“Today marks the culmination of the 11th program I’ve run at Techstars,” said Lift Labs Accelerator managing director KJ Singh. “Having invested in over 100 companies during my tenure and run more programs than anyone else at Techstars, past or present, this is without a doubt the class I am most excited about.”

One of the spotlight participants in this year’s cohort was Diana AI, which is developing a conversational business intelligence tool designed to help users analyze enterprise data using voice or text. During the accelerator, founders Geeta Banda and Teja Nanduri acquired their first paying customers and signed six new enterprise customers, including Comcast.

Another standout was Edisn.ai, which provides a platform that generates real-time personalized sports content from live video streams using AI. Ashok Karanth, Akshay Chandrasekhar, and team launched a soon-to-be-expanded pilot with Comcast’s Watchwith Xfinity platform to deliver interactive content for football games. Additionally, they kicked off pilot discussions with NBC10, Universal Pictures, and Telemundo62 Philadelphia for sports, news, and entertainment programming.

David Sturgeon’s and Constantine Tsang’s Pivan Interactive, another cohort graduate, leverages computer vision and AI to provide training and analytics for competitive gaming athletes. They’ve partnered with Comcast Spectacor’s T1 Entertainment & Sports, an esports venture, to develop a suite of data-driven tools. And they’re in discussions with the Philadelphia Fusion (a team competing in Blizzard’s Overwatch) around a future partnership involving the newly announced Fusion Arena.

Last but not least, there’s Respeecher, whose technology transforms voices with natural language processing such that one person can imitate the voice of another. (It’s a bit like the recently acquired Montreal-based Lyrebird in that way.) Founders Oleksandr Serdiuk, Grant Reaber, and Dmytro Bielievtsov dramatically improved their product’s efficiency during the accelerator program. (It now requires five times less time to convert speech.) Concurrently, they established relationships with partners covering over 75% of the U.S. entertainment box office and over 40% of the audiobooks market.

“It has been such a fantastic experience for all of the Comcast NBCUniversal mentors to work side-by-side with these dynamic companies to help them grow and launch their businesses,” said Comcast Cable chief business development officer Sam Schwartz. “The Founders of these promising startups have an incredible passion and drive, and we are so excited to see what’s next for them.”

The Lift Labs Accelerator will begin accepting applications for its third class in January 2020, Comcast says, which is scheduled to begin in July 2020 in Philadelphia.

The Tuesday edition of Electoral-Vote.com examines the fact that Trump’s Republican party has abandoned almost all of the things they used to believe in and champion. Instead their core principle has become “support whatever Donald Trump says or does”. For example:

Conservatives no longer believe in conservation of the environment. This has been coming for a while, but remember that Republicans were once the champions of conservation (it is part of their namesake even). This was as recently as the presidency of Richard Nixon, who helped create the Environmental Protection Agency. Instead, the GOP has turned to using doublespeak, as their party platform is now that the best way to “conserve” the environment is to hand it over to businesses to develop. Most recently, Trump is starting to eviscerate the Endangered Species Act.

When Obama was president, Republicans were dead set against deficits, warning us all the time about how deficit spending would destroy our country. But they now simultaneously cut taxes and increase spending, never worrying about deficits at all.

Republicans used to hate Russia as our primary enemy. But even though Russia is still doing things that hurt the US — like sabotaging our elections, and building new nuclear weapons and other WMDs — Trump and the Republicans ignore this threat. Or even worse, they do things that will weaken our allies in Europe, which will give more power to Russia (and to China as well).

The article’s conclusion is that the Republican Party is having an identity crisis. They don’t know what they actually stand for, other than the hatred and bigotry spewed by Trump.

This past weekend NBA All-Star Blake Griffin, returned to the Just For Laughs Festival in Montreal as host and curator of an all-star lineup stand-up show, which was comedy. by blake.

Sources stated that Blake raised funds for the Team Griffin Foundation, (an organization committed to young men and women – providing them the best opportunities to develop and showcase their skills and learn essential lessons of life, competition and hard work), as the show was headlined by Neal Brennan.

Brennan, is a three-time Emmy nominated writer, director, producer and stand-up comedian, probably best known for his work on The Chappelle Show which was broadcast on Comedy Central.

The show also included comedians Jim Norton, Jimmy Carr, Jeff Ross, Sam Jay, and more!

Below is a video of Griffin performing way back in 2016;

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Artificial intelligence has broken out of the black box and is now the not-so-secret recipe for real-world business results. Industry disrupters like Lyft, Uber, Airbnb, and LinkedIn are demonstrating the power of going all-in on machine learning solutions and AI tools. At the same time, both smaller and more traditional companies are seeing AI as a must-have capability. We want to take the temperature out there and learn exactly where companies, of all sizes, are at in their AI explorations, and the challenges and successes they’re experiencing.

That’s why VB has launched a new AI survey for execs who may already be integrating AI into their workflows and product development, as well as those who are interested in learning how to get started, where to focus their resources, and what kind of results they can expect. It takes just a few minutes, and in return, you’ll have exclusive access to the full results, which won’t be released publicly.

While you’re at it, join the conversation, and register for Transform 2019: Accelerating Your Business with AI. It’s two days of unbeatable networking, case studies featuring real ROI from industry giants to ingenious startup, and how-to AI product workshops in deep learning, edge computing and more. And you’ll meet AI leaders from companies like Facebook, AirBnb, Uber, Google, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Amazon, and many more.

AI is the biggest competitive advantage the market has experienced in decades, and Forrester has found that companies are starting to sit up and take notice — 88 percent of marketers have adopted or are planning to adopt AI. It’s not too late to launch your own strategy — or level it up.

To learn more about where your company stands now, and how the market is evolving in the AI-first era, take the VB AI Survey now, and look for the exclusive full results once the survey period closes.

When many of us hear the term elevator pitch, the first scenarios that come to mind are an interview or a sales presentation. However, these brief soundbites are no longer reserved for those moments when you’re put on the spot and have to quickly sell what you have to offer.

In today’s world, having an elevator pitch ready at all times allows you to seize the moment and take advantage of those spontaneous opportunities to tell your target audience what you’re all about. In other words, an elevator pitch is a perfect way for you to market your brand on the spot — no matter where you are

A strong elevator pitch is essential because it provides a strong backbone for your messaging and serves as a launching point for the rest of your marketing efforts. Furthermore, it empowers every single member of your organization to serve as a brand ambassador so you never miss an opportunity to rep your brand.

Still not convinced that now is the time to refine your elevator pitch? Whether you already have an elevator pitch that just needs a nice polish or are starting completely from scratch, these strategies will help you craft a message that makes your brand shine.

Identify What Makes You Special

Unless you’re lucky enough to be the sole vendor available to meet the needs of your consumer, chances are your competitors will probably have similar things to say in their own elevator pitch. If you truly want to fuel your demand generation machine, you need to focus on what makes your organization different and better — and why it makes total sense for your customers to choose you over other options.

Keep in mind, this is also an opportunity to mention areas where your competitors fall short and you excel. For example, if you typically have customers migrating to you because they were dissatisfied with the level of support they received from a competitor, you’ll want to mention your commitment to customer service. Your leads have likely come across these critiques in their own research, so addressing this fact will reaffirm what they already know and bring them one step closer to converting into loyal customers.

Remember to Highlight Results

Even if you’ve managed to pique the interest of your target audience, your leads will want to make sure they’ll be getting the best possible return on investment. Therefore, you should highlight results that back up your claims to show that you’re the real deal and gain the trust of your target customers.

Depending on the message you’re trying to convey in your elevator pitch, these are just a few of the results you might want to highlight.

Customer Success: Do you have a customer who has seen exceptional results from your product or service? (Bonus points if they are in the same vertical as your audience members.)

Industry Stats: Do you have any statistics to show how your target customers are benefiting from your partnership? Or do you have any percentages that show how you’re excelling in a specific area in comparison to your competitors?

Value: Do you offer customers more bang for their buck? If so, how?

High Retention Rates: Demonstrating that you have what it takes to keep customers happy can speak volumes, especially for customers looking to avoid the cost of switching vendors in the future.

Keep It Brief and Make Sure It Rolls off the Tongue

Although your elevator pitch is supposed to serve as a foundation for your overall brand messaging, you don’t want to give all your secrets away at once. Instead, give your audience just enough to keep them wanting more, and then let the rest of your nurturing efforts continue to tell your story in a way that is easy to digest and remember.

If you want to encourage members of your organization to spread the word, your elevator pitch must be easy enough to remember and recite when the perfect moment arrives. The last thing you want to do is to lose credibility with your audience because your team members don’t seem like they know what they’re talking about.

Make Sure to Relate Your Pitch to the Rest of Your Marketing Efforts

A solid elevator pitch serves as a great introduction to your brand, but your marketing and sales efforts don’t end there. Every savvy marketer knows that to convert your target audience into loyal customers, you have to invest time nurturing new contacts and providing them with a unique and targeted experience.

Your goal should be to use relevant website content, outbound messaging, social media, and other marketing efforts to support and elaborate on the claims you made in your elevator pitch. The perk is that since your customers already have an initial understanding of what you do, they’ll be more likely to engage with you as you take them on this journey.

According to sources, we hear that comedian and actor Deon Cole (of Black-ish, Grown-ish, Angie Tribeca fame) is preparing to shoot his brand new comedy special for Netflix on June 7th!

No word yet on what the theme of his new special will be and no word yet on what the name of the special, but we hear that Cole has been touring the country working on his material on what’s going to be his funniest performance to date.

Applying Production Updates

From 5th April, Microsoft will enable the April ’19 new features across its customer base on a region-by-region basis.

Applying the April ’19 update to production instances can be scheduled outside business hours. Alternatively, the update will automatically be applied by Microsoft.

By the end of April, all production instances will be switched on to receive the update. As a result, this will see all D365 Online customers on the latest version, as Microsoft has previously announced.